How to sign PDF documents on iPhone and iPad

You can digitally sign PDF documents on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch without needing any third-party app. Here’s how to use Apple’s built-in Markup feature to add your signature to a PDF file or manually sign a document.

Sign a PDF on iPhone and iPad

About signing a PDF electronically

Digitally signing documents is a great productivity feature. Say you’re out and about with your iPhone or iPad, and someone happens to email you a contract, a lease agreement, an internet service form, or another important document that needs signing quickly. With Markup, you don’t need to print out the document, sign it the old-fashioned way, then scan the printout to send it back as an attachment.

How to sign a PDF on iPhone and iPad

You can add a previously saved signature or manually sign a document. Here are the steps to do that:

1) Open a PDF document you’d like to sign digitally in an app that supports Markup, like:

  • Files: Open a PDF you’d like to sign and tap the Markup button (pencil inside a circle).
  • Safari: Open a webpage or PDF, tap the share icon and choose Markup.
  • Mail: Open an email, tap an attachment, and then tap the Markup button.
  • Books: Open a PDF and tap the Markup button.
  • Messages: Go to the messages conversation and tap the person’s name from the top. Scroll down and from under Photos or Documents, tap an image or PDF. Now, tap the Markup button.
  • Photos: Open a picture and tap Edit > Markup button.
  • Notes: Tap a document in your note and then tap the Markup button.
  • Other apps: If you don’t see the Markup button in other apps, you can tap the share icon and choose Save to Files. After that, go to the Files app, open the PDF, and tap the Markup button.

2) Tap the plus button (+) at the bottom of the Markup screen.

3) Tap Signature.

4) Sign your name with your finger, Apple Pencil (on supported devices), or another stylus. Unsatisfied with the way your digital signature has turned out? Hit Clear to start over! If you already have previously saved signatures, choose one from the menu.

5) Feel free to drag your inserted signature to move it around freely or even change its size by using the blue buttons to grow or shrink the surrounding box. To change the ink color, tap the digital signature you just applied to a PDF document and select any of the color circles provided at the bottom of the Markup interface.

6) Tap Done to save the changes.

Sign a PDF using Markup on iPhone

Tip: Invoke Markup faster on iPad by placing your Apple Pencil on what you’d like to annotate.

In addition to the above Signature tool, you can also use the pen or pencil tool inside Markup to sign your documents.

Must see: 3 ways to save your signature as an image on iPhone and iPad

Save and manage your signatures

Your saved signatures are kept in sync across your iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and Mac as long as they’re signed in to the same iCloud account. Plus, any signatures already created in Preview for Mac will automatically appear in the iOS signature inserter and vice versa.

You can add one or more signatures to use over and over again. Here’s how to add or remove a signature from your iPhone, iPad, and other Apple devices:

1) Open a document in the Files app and tap the Markup button.

2) Tap the plus icon (+) and choose Signature.

3) Tap Add or Remove signature from the popup menu.

5) You can now add as many new signatures as you like or delete existing ones.

  • To remove a signature: Tap the red minus button () next to a previously saved signature, then choose Delete.
  • To add a signature: Tap the plus button (+), sign your name above the line, and tap Done. You can have as many saved signatures as you’d like. For ease, you can also rotate your device in landscape mode.
Add or Remove Signature on iPhone

As mentioned earlier, the signature feature is available anywhere Markup is accessible.

For instance, you can easily add your signature to any image in the Photos app. Or, you could sign a PDF kept in a third-party cloud storage service right from the Files app. Perhaps you’d like to quickly send a signed PDF attachment to someone without leaving Mail?

With Markup, you can do all that and then some more!

If you use Notes as your document scanner, you can sign any scanned document and send it quickly via Mail, iMessage, or another service without ever leaving the Notes app.

Similarly, you can use the Markup tools to sign an agreement that was attached to an email message and send it back on its way without switching apps—Mail intuitively inserts your newly signed attachment into a reply to the original email it came in.

And with Instant Markup, you can annotate screenshots right after taking them.

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